Carroll, Lewis - Alice in wondeland

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the pseudonyms of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born in Cheshire in 1832, he lived an happy childhood. At Oxford he became a lecture in Mathematics and published a work about Euclid. In the meantime he wrote books for children like “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and its sequel “Through the looking-glass”. For this reason we can talk about the Carroll’s dualism—> poetry and logic 

Lewis Carroll was the creator of nonsensical world, critics say that he had the brain of abnormal person, but the heart of normal child. 
He died in 1898.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

- The story talks about a young girl, Alice, who dreams that she follows a white rabbit down a small hole into an amazing world where everything is illogical. Here she met strange creatures & characters like the Mad Hatter, the March hare, the Cheshire cat, the queen/king of hearts. In the end Alice wakes up and coming back to the reality.
- It was set in Wonderland, a crazy world where she entered following a white rabbit. Animals acts like normal people and there are no references to dark or night, it’s like our world seen by the eyes of a child but the story takes place in the real world, she sleep next to her sister.

Themes

- The main themes are:
1. Growing up
2. Child’s struggle to survive in the adult’s world.—> she has a different way to live,
different concept of time and space.
3. Identity —> Alice is order to idenfity herself by creature she met, she has doubts
about her identity, she grows and shrinks. She is worried and want to find right size.
The style is harmonious and it’s incorporated poetic language in a parodic form, there are a lot of puns.

Mad tea party

They were having tea but the march hare proposed some wine to Alice, that’s an example of nonsense: wine to a little girl and in the afternoon whit tea, but on the table there isn’t wine.
They shout “no room” (non c’è spazio) even if the table was very long and they were in a corner, they have no sense of space (a common human behavior).

She expressed a judge and the Mad Hatter answer to Alice.
An other important features of the text was the riddles, but no-one has the answer , they have no sense and makes Alice thoughtful.
Concept of time, are always 6 o’clock. This because mad hatter kill time (person) and was stopped by queen of hearts. And this the motives—> they spent their time to round in the table, is always time of tea and didn’t time to wash.